"This talk will provide an overview of research exploring the social capital implications of social network site use. Specifically, I will report on new research that attempts to identify specific Facebook-enabled behaviors that contribute to users' ability to access diverse perspective, novel information, and social support. This research explores the link between bridging social capital levels and Facebook-related factors such as time on site, the number of Facebook Friends, and a set of behaviors we call 'Cultivation of Social Resources.'"

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"Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty was quickly dismissed upon its release in 1974. Not only did it have to contend with the lingering success of 1972's similarly themed but significantly less abstract The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, but it was quickly followed by the dreamlike, bi–polar romantic entanglement of the director's last film, That Obscure Object of Desire. Like Discreet Charm, the plot–free Phantom of Liberty is a patchwork of comedic sketches and sight gags through which Buñuel ravages a complacent European culture and the various sexual hang–ups and historical and cultural disconnects of its inhabitants. This heady, almost off–putting masterwork isn't particularly easy to decipher (maybe we aren't meant to), which is why it's best to approach it as a literal comedy of manners.

Films structured around daisy chains of dysfunction are a dime a dozen; most, though, are as tiresomely long–winded as they are content with their own strained circularity. This isn't the case with Phantom of Liberty, which begins with a shot of Goya's 1808 masterpiece 'The Third of May.' The painting depicts Napoleon's army executing a group of faceless Spaniards, and via a reenactment of this struggle, Buñuel depicts how one of Napoleon's captains tries to defile the monument of Doña Elvira only to be smacked on the head by the moving arm of the statue of the woman's husband. (He later intends to sleep with the woman's corpse, and when he opens her coffin, he's amazed by how her beauty has been preserved.) It's the first of many sight gags in the film, each and every one as startling as they are perversely funny. All these moments are possessed by a sense of shocked wonderment and discovery, and they all more or less evoke fragile pasts and characters trying to reconcile their historical detachments."

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"What all of this means is that technology is not neutral. It embodies values, both in how it is constructed and in the decision to deploy it. As such, it refers to its history of use and the practices that surround it. The observation that 'the computer is just a tool' is missing the point. It is a tool with a point of view and with the ability to change user behavior and our expectations of information. Additionally, as technology becomes more immersive–exists more as a convincing simulation of some reality it is no longer a tool or a medium in the same sense as pen and ink. It represents its own world, one with implicit and explicit rules, communities of practice, and transformative power over what and how things mean. The technological responsibility of the graphic designer is therefore not simply to master software programs, but to understand the technological context as enabling or constraining cognitive and social behaviors that have a direct impact on the success of communication."

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Erving Goffman: backstage and frontstage behaviour

"Throughout our society there tends to be one informal or backstage language of behaviour, and another language of behaviour for occasions when a performance is being presented. The backstage language consists of reciprocal first–naming, co–operative decision–making, profanity, open sexual remarks, elaborate griping, smoking, rough informal dress, ' sloppy' sitting and standing posture, use of dialect or sub–standard speech, mumbling and shouting, playful aggressivity and 'kidding,' inconsiderateness for the other in minor but potentially symbolic acts, minor physical self–involvements such as humming, whistling, chewing, nibbling, belching, and flatulence. The frontstage behaviour language can be taken as the absence (and in some sense the opposite) of this. In general, then, backstage conduct is one which allows minor acts which might easily be taken as symbolic of intimacy and disrespect for others present and for the region, while front region conduct is one which disallows such potentially offensive behaviour." [1]

(Erving Goffman, 1959, p.78)

[1] It may be noted that backstage behaviour has what psychologists might call a 'regressive' character. The question, of course, is whether a backstage gives individuals an opportunity to regress or whether regression, in the clinical sense, is backstage conduct invoked on inappropriate occasions for motives that are not socially approved.

Goffman, E. (1959). "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life", University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.